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After months of quiet diplomacy, the Norwegian government has given up on efforts to send former terrorist-group leader Mullah Krekar back to his homeland. Krekar, who has been under an expulsion order after being determined a threat to Norway's national security, initially came to Norway as a refugee from Iraq in the early 1990s. It later emerged that he was the head of guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam and he repeatedly violated the terms of his asylum by travelling back to northern Iraq to lead guerrilla activities. Krekar is the only person in Norway ever to have been sentenced to deportation...

The Liberal media has been focused on a so called Gaffe John McCain has made recently in the press. Example is this IPS news story http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41693 POLITICS-US: McCain's Gaffes Reflect Bush's Iran-Qaeda Myth Analysis by Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (IPS) - Sen. John McCain's confusion in recent allegations of Iranian training of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq is the result of a drumbeat of official propaganda about close Iran-al Qaeda ties that the George W. Bush administration and neoconservatives have promoted ever since early 2002. Funny how the left-wing press is eager to point out a McCain Gaffe when...

Insight News Television presents a film on Ansar al-Islam - the radical Islamic militia named by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in his speach to the UN. He said it was one of the missing links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Our reporter, Jonathan Miller, spent two days with Ansar's leader, Mullah Krekar. Krekar's an Iraqi Kurd, but is today living in Norway, which granted his family political asylum ten years ago. Refugee status hasn't stopped him from returning regularly to Northern Iraq to wage jihad and commit human rights abuses against his own people. Krekar set...

A former Defense and Finance Minister of post-invasion Iraq, Ali A. Allawi has completed and just released a book titled "The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace" that talks about the inner workings of many things that took place in post-invasion Iraqi government. Amir Taheri's review of the book for Asharq al Alawsat reveals that Allawi's points to some of the roots of today's violence in Iraq going back over a decade to when Saddam Hussein used violent groups for his own domestic purposes. One of the most interesting revelations in this book is Allawi's account of...

The Iranian Revolution in Iraq KOMALAH COMPOUND, NORTHERN IRAQ ? They were supposed to be social democrats, the people Patrick Lasswell and I met yesterday in a compound outside the city of Suleimaniya, the cultural capital of Northern Iraqi Kurdistan. We had it all set up. We were to meet Abu Bakr Mudarisy and his associates for lunch at 11:00 A.M. and learn what we could about the anti-government resistance a few miles away in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Our driver Yusef misunderstood and took us to the wrong place. He did drop us off where we met left-wing...

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - A Turkish court on Friday sentenced seven men caught in 2004 while allegedly planning to assassinate visiting U.S. President George W. Bush , CNN-Turk reported. The seven were said to be members of the Ansar al-Islam radical Islamic group, which prosecutors said has ties to al-Qaida. They were caught in a raid before a June 2004 NATO Summit in Istanbul, which Bush attended. The leader of the group, Alpaslan Toprak, was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison, while the other six defendants each received six years and three months, CNN-Turk reported. They were...

Globalterroralert.com 10/21/04http://www.globalterroralert.com/ansarsunnah1004-4.pdf "Those of us from the Ansar Al-Sunnah Army celebrate and congratulate the Muslims and all of our mujahideen brothers in the Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement on the occasion of their inclusion on the list of terrorists... Praise be to Allah, it increased the joy in our hearts that John Kerry, the presidential candidate, has criticized the Bush government for taking so long in making this declaration. The one who may become the president of America is already struck with terror by our brothers from the Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement. The repeated attacks that have targeted the evil Bush are now...

Lt. General Michael DeLong discusses intelligence behind U.S. concern over Ansar al-Islam terror/poison camp in Northern IraqA recent conversation Lt. General Michael DeLong revealed new information on prewar intelligence on Iraq that has received little, if any, public attention thus far. General DeLong was the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and was directly involved with the pre-invasion preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom. He offered the observation that Bush administration officials appear to have been reluctant thus far in explaining the prewar intelligence and evidence tying members of Saddam Hussein’s regime to the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Three undercover CIA officers arrived in Norway in the spring of 2003 as part of a possible secret operation targeting for rendition an Islamic militant living in Oslo known as Mullah Krekar, The Washington Post reported. Citing lawyers and unnamed European investigators, the newspaper said shortly after the agents arrived, Krekar received a warning from an anonymous Norwegian official that Krekar, then head of a Kurdish insurgent group, was a CIA target and should watch his back. The spies left Norway by the end of the summer, the report said. If the CIA was planning to abduct...

ALBANY - A mosque leader charged with helping launder money in a missile plot thought all the weapon talk was a joke, his lawyer said yesterday - but prosecutors were not laughing. Imam Yassin Muhiddin Aref was jailed without bail after prosecutors questioned why his name was found in a notebook in a terrorist camp listed as "Commander Yassin, United States." They also unveiled a photo of the imam's co-defendant watching as an informant shouldered a real surface-to-air missile in the back room of an Albany-area convenience store. That was among the evidence cited by prosecutors in Albany Federal Court...

ALBANY -- Jurors heard three opening statements this morning in the federal trial of two Albany men facing terrorism-related charges. Yassin M. Aref, 36, the jailed spiritual leader of a Central Avenue mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, 51, a city pizza shop owner, are accused of taking part in a plot to sell missile launchers to terrorists during an FBI sting that began in July 2003. The men face up to 400 years in prison if convicted. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Pericak for the government; Kent Sprotbery for Aref; and Kevin Luibrand for Hossain made brief opening statements in U.S....

Sheikh Zana’ gang became the first group that have formally been executed by the Kurdistan Regional Government’s authorities, reported local media in Kurdistan on Thursday. The group of 11 people were hanged in the capital of Kurdistan, Arbil on Thursday. The group was named after their leader Zana Nasrat Sheikh Abdulkarim Barzinji, known as Sheikh Zana. The group members confessed to their crimes on Kurdistan’s TV few months ago.

Revisiting Ansar al Islam's CBW capabilities kurdmap (Back-to-Iraq photo) With the upcoming Senate Intelligence report due shortly, perhaps the question of where and how Ansar al Islam received CBW know-how (which included ricin, botulinum and possibly cyanide) and equipment will finally be answered. Initial reports from American media outlets mentioned the findings of the Ansar al Islam camps in Northern Iraq included directions on making high grade explosives and Iraqi military grade TNT in addition to the CBW starter kit. As mentioned by both the 9-11 Commission and Senate Intelligence Committee, the group's support from Saddam Hussein's regime included various...

A Norwegian newspaper is reporting that several agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been present and operating in Norway, in an effort to spirit Mullah Krekar out of the country. US officials have long suspected Krekar of having terrorist links. As the former head of guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam, Krekar also is accused of murders back in Iraq, and he has voiced support for Islamic terrorists on Arabic television. Newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad has reported that the US government tried to spirit Krekar out of Norway three years ago. The newspaper said it had information showing that several...

Ansar al-Islam and Saddam Hussein's regime Much has been written about Iraq's possible state-sponsorship of the Islamic militant group , who resided in Northern Iraq between 2001 and 2003, referred to by an assortment of names (Jund al-Islam, Ansar al-Islam, later Ansar al-Sunnah, etc.). Now that some of the people involved in the possible relationship have been caught and interrogated, and the region has been secured and analyzed, the story should be reevaluated. What allegations of support can be better confirmed or denied 3 years after the start of the U.S. led invasion?

How [radical] Islam makes one into a fascist, whether you are Arab, black, etc. The broader view of the deep & wide reality of Islamofascism What do the Arab Muslim massacre in NYC WTC, The Pakistani Muslim bombing in London, the Arab Muslim bombing in Madrid, an Indonesian attack on Australians in Bali, an Arab Muslim racist attack on an ordinary Jew in Paris, Arabs' onslaught in the genocide campaign in Sudan, WW2's Bosnian Muslims attacking Christian Serbs, Jordanian Arab murderer: Zarqawi that seperated (Nazi style) between Shiite & Sunni kids on a bus, Arab slave masters in Mauritania, a...

TERRORIST CHEMICAL EXPERT KILLED IN BAGHDAD RAID Release Date: 5/8/2006 Release Number: 06-05-08P Description: BAGHDAD, Iraq – Ansar al-Islam member and chemical expert, Ali Wali, was killed May 6th at approximately 1 p.m. during a counterterrorist raid in the Mansur district of Baghdad. Iraqi civilians transported the two bodies to the morgue where Coalition forces later confirmed the identity of the wanted terrorist, Ali Wali. Neither Iraqi nor Coalition forces were able to confirm the identity of the driver, who was killed. Ali Wali, full name believed to be Abbas bin Farnas bin Qafqas, was a 37 or 38-year-old Iraqi...

Iraqi Ansar Al-Islam Commander Mullah Krekar in Norway: "No Peace Between West & Islam Until Islamic Caliphate is Re-established; Bin Laden & Al-Zawahiri are Good People; Muslims in Europe Increase Like Mosquitoes – By 2050 Europe Will Be 30% Muslim" In the aftermath of the controversy over the cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, the Internet edition of the Norwegian daily Dagbladet interviewed Kurdish Iraqi Islamist Mullah Krekar. In it, Krekar expounded his views on relations between Islam and the West. Krekar, whose real name is Najm Al-Din Faraj Ahmad, came to Norway as a refugee in 1991, where he established...

ARBIL, (Southern Kurdistan), April 4, 2006 (AFP) - A court in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region Tuesday sentenced to death 12 members of militant group Ansar Al-Islam for numerous killings and explosions, an Arbil judiciary official said. "Zana Nusrat Abdel Karim, the chief of a cell of Ansar al-Islam and 11 other members were condemned to death by the criminal court of Arbil," the official told AFP. The 12 were convicted of numerous "terrorist" activities and killings of civilians in Kurdistan's Arbil and Dahuk regions, the official said. Karim, 35, a mechanical engineer and resident of Arbil used to carry out...

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on...

In the coded language of Lokman Amin Mohammed's smuggling network, fighters and suicide bombers sent to Iraq were called "workers" for "the firm." When one band of fighters he smuggled from Germany launched its first attack, Mohammed exclaimed in a phone conversation: "They have celebrated their first feast." Last month, the 33-year-old was sentenced in Munich to seven years in prison for smuggling fighters to and from Iraq, and for membership in "the firm," better known as Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for suicide attacks against civilians and U.S. soldiers. During sentencing, Justice Bernd von Heintschel-Heinegg said Mohammed's...

An American citizen held in Iraq since 2004 allegedly worked with terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and helped plan insurgent attacks on foreigners in Iraq, NBC News has learned.

Brescia and Naples, 18 Nov. (AKI) - The three Algerians detained on Tuesday in the Italian cities of Brescia and Naples were planning a massive terror attack - "on a ship as big as the Titanic, packed with explosives" - that aimed to kill "at least 10,000 people", as well as an attack on "Italian citizens and interests" in Tunisia, according phone conversations between the three men, which Italian anti-terror police say they intercepted after al-Qaeda's deadly 7 July attacks on London and on the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. In their tapped phone conversations, Yamine Bouhrama, Mohamed...

Twisting the Al-Qaida Connection Posted by Mithridate Ombud on November 28, 2005 - 15:22. Robyn Blumner, former ACLU Director and current St. Petersburg Times columnist retreads this old leftist tire: Fox News gives its audience what it wants, too. That's why, in 2003, a survey from the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 67 percent of its loyal viewers believed the fallacy that Saddam Hussein was connected to al-Qaida, whereas only 40 percent of those who relied on print media were confused on that point. Welcome to the "informed" electorate of a newspaper-free world. It's already starting to give...

At the time, the meeting hardly seemed notable--let alone the start of the world's deadliest partnership. It was late in 1999, and Osama bin Laden was sheltering in Afghanistan, already deep into his plot to attack the World Trade Center. His visitor was a burly young Jordanian, bruised and furious after spending six years inside his country's worst prisons. Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi had traveled to Afghanistan with a proposal for the al-Qaeda chief: he wanted to rally Islam's "true believers" to rise up against corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Bin Laden was skeptical. While al-Zarqawi advocated a war on...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three Iraqi men will stand trial in Germany accused of planning to kill their visiting prime minister and belonging to a terrorist group, the German prosecutor's office said on Wednesday. It said the three were members of Ansar al-Islam, which the United States calls a major insurgent group linked to al Qaeda. Two of them, named as Ata R., 31, and Mazen H., 23, are also accused of collecting and transferring funds to Iraq and Iran on behalf of the network. The third man, named as Rafik Y., 31, had phoned the others to obtain their approval...

LONDON, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- British officials say as many as 70 young Muslim men have left the country for Iraq to fight in the insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation. The London Sunday Times cited unnamed British counterterrorism officials whom it did not quote directly, except to describe the movement of young fanatics to Iraq in the past two years as "a steady trickle." The paper said Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had set up a network in Britain "to recruit and train would-be suicide bombers and gunmen." It said the group was called Ansar al-Fath, or Partisans of...

ALBANY, N.Y. - Two Muslim men caught up in an anti-terrorism sting operation pleaded innocent Friday as details emerged about 10 new charges against them. Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain were accused Thursday of attempting to provide support to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group listed by the federal government as a terrorist organization. Aref, who leads a mosque, also was charged with lying to federal officials. The pair were initially charged in August 2004 with conspiring to launder money and promoting terrorism. They now face a total of 30 charges. Entered as new evidence against Aref were entries in his personal...

London – An Iranian military source has disclosed an initiative on behalf of 'Al Quds Corps', which is affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, to reinforce its relations with 'Ansar Al Islam Organization' in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Qa'idat Al Jihad Fi Bilad Al Rafidain (The Base of Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers) in the center and south of Iraq. The Iranian officer, who is a former colonel in 'Al Quds Corps' told Al Sharq Al Awsat that officials from the Revolutionary Guard have recently me[t] with leaders of Ansar Al Islam and the Jihad organizations in...

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...

AS THE WAR with Saddam's Iraq approached, a small group of terrorists in Kurdish-controlled Iraq garnered a significant amount of news coverage. Senior-level Bush administration officials had claimed that this group, Ansar al Islam, represented a key link between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda. There was evidence, after all, that Saddam's intelligence operatives funded and supplied the al Qaeda terrorists who joined this group's ranks in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan. That evidence was hotly contested for months until the story of Ansar al Islam gradually receded from the headlines. Today, the group is hardly even mentioned--if at...

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraqi Kurdistan - "A series of suicide bombings in previously peaceful South Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan) has aroused suspicions that elements of the Iranian regime are backing efforts to destabilize the region." writes The Washington Times. "Before then, Tehran was keen to see the Kurds cooperate with the [Iraqi] Shi’ite parties," he said. "Now that the Shi’ites are on top, Iran is doing its best to weaken the Kurdish wing in parliament. Bomb attacks up here are an ideal distraction." said a Kurdish official. At least 85 persons have died and hundreds have been injured in three attacks over the...

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."  U.S. government "Summary of Evidence" for an Iraqi member of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay, CubaFOR MANY, the debate over the former Iraqi regime's ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ended a year ago with the release of the 9/11 Commission report. Media outlets seized on a carefully worded summary that the commission had found no evidence "indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or...

A SERIES of arrests in Spain, Germany, France and Holland has revealed a European terror network that recruits fighters and suicide bombers and sends them into Iraq.For two years recruiters have been providing fake documents, training and finance for the fighters, communicating secretly over the internet and liaising with cells based in Syria. Despite much closer links between intelligence and law enforcement agencies across Europe, experts say that the terrorists are moving between European countries to avoid detection. “The terrorists are operating internationally, even if the law enforcement agencies are a long way behind them,” said M J Gohel, chief...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A former Iraqi general believed to be Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's "military adviser" was arrested west of Baghdad. Abed Dawood Suleiman and his son, former army captain Raed Abed Dawood, were picked up in a morning raid on their house in Khalidiya, west of Baghdad, a defense ministry source said Wednesday. Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, is believed to have masterminded much of the country's violence, including car and suicide bombings that killed almost 700 people in May alone. He has a 25-million-dollar price on his head. "Abed Dawood Suleiman is considered to be Abu...

MADRID: Spanish authorities have arrested 19 suspected extremists, including five linked to last year's deadly Madrid train bombings, the interior ministry announced Wednesday. The other 14 suspects are alleged to be connected with the radical group Ansa al-Islam, which is believed to have links with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq. More than 500 police were mobilised for the swoops, which were carried out in the regions around Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Andalucia as well as in the Spanish enclave of Cueta north of Morocco. The March 11, 2004 train bombings in...

Former Ansar Al-Islam leader mullah Krekar compared his goal for Kurds with the establishment of the state of Israel as he testified in his trial to overturn a decision to expel him from Norway. Laywer Brynjar Meling (right) and mullah Krekar during a pause in proceedings at Oslo's Court of Appeals. On Thursday morning mullah Krekar began his explanation of why he should not be sent out of the country. Before beginning his testimony the mullah kissed the Koran and said that Norwegian authorities were justified in their investigation but explained that he felt a victim of religious persecution. "I...

The accused terrorist and former leader of Ansar-Al Islam Mullah Krekar is in these days trying to prevent being expelled from Norway by sueing the Norwegian Goverment. Norwegian Minister Erna Solberg (Conservative)has decided that Krekar is a threat to the Norwegians and there for signed his deportation order on the grounds that he has broken the terms of his assylum by traveling back to North Iraq and that he posses a threat to national security. Krekars laywer, Meling claims that Krekar will not be safe if expelled and therefore can not be forced out. Nor is the country stable enough...

Baghdad, 23 May - The number two of the al-Qaeda network, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Iraq under a false name in September 1999 to take part in the ninth Popular Islamic Congress, former Iraqi premier Iyad Allawi has revealed to pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. In an interview, Allawi made public information discovered by the Iraqi secret service in the archives of the Saddam Hussein regime, which sheds light on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Islamic terrorist network. He also said that both al-Zawahiri and Jordanian militant al-Zarqawi probably entered Iraq in the same period. "Al-Zawahiri was summoned by Izza Ibrahim...

Mullah Krekar to be expelled Controversial mullah Krekar, former leader of Ansar al-Islam, will be expelled from Norway, on the instructions of Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Erna Solberg. Solberg instructed the Immigration Appeals Board (UNE) to uphold the decision to expel Krekar on the grounds of national security. "This is something we have been waiting for for some time. For my client and me it is neither new nor surprising that the UNE has received instructions from the ministry," said Krekar's legal counsel, Brynjar Meling. The ruling means that Krekar now loses his asylum status, travel documents,...

Celebrity Pentecostal preacher Runar Søgaard is under protection by Swedish police after receiving death threats. A high-profile sermon where Sögaard called the prophet Mohammed "a confused pedophile" has triggered fears of religious war. Søgaard, 37, enjoys celebrity status in Sweden after his marriage to recording star and Eurovision song contest winner Carola, even though they are now divorced. "Even if I see Runar while he has major police protection I will shoot him to death," a radical Islamist told Swedish newspaper Expressen. Persons connected to the Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam claim to have received a fatwa, a decree from a...

BERLIN (AP) - Islamic terror groups are becoming increasingly active in Germany and coordinating with militants across Europe to recruit fighters to join the insurgency in Iraq, equipping them with fake passports, money and medical supplies, security officials say. One of the best examples of the cross-continent cooperation involves an Algerian man arrested in Germany and now on trial in Italy for allegedly helping Muslims from Somalia, Egypt, Iraq and Morocco recruit some 200 militants from around Europe to fight in Iraq. Many in Germany's Islamic communities have shown sympathy for Muslims fighting jihad, or holy war, in places like...

MADRID (Reuters) - Armed Islamist militants that operate in Europe are also helping support the armed insurgency in Iraq, one of Europe's foremost experts on such groups told Reuters. Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has been investigating Islamist militants in Spain since 1991, warned that groups such as the Algerian Salafist movement and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group were particularly dangerous for Europe. "They are groups that have membership inside and outside Europe and in any case we have to keep close watch on the relationship these groups have with others like Ansar al-Islam," Garzon told Reuters in...

Ansar al-Islam Emerges as Primary Extremist Group Funneling Fighters Into Iraq Copenhagen – When robbers stole more than $300,000 from an armored car here in 1997, investigators were taken aback by the size and brazenness of the heist. But they really became alarmed when they discovered that one of the culprits had been under surveillance as a suspected Islamic extremist. That man, Mustapha Darwich Ramadan, was arrested shortly before he planned to flee Copenhagen on a flight to Amman, Jordan, police said. He was convicted of robbery and served 3 1/2 years in prison. After his release in June 2001,...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- An Iraqi militant group has claimed responsibility in an Internet statement for downing a British military transport plane north of Baghdad on election day. The Ansar al-Islam group said in a statement posted Sunday on an Islamic Web site that its fighters tracked the aircraft, "which was flying at a low altittude, and fired an anti-tank missile at it." British officials have not said how many people died when the plane sent down, but Britain's Press Association has reported that "around 10" servicemen were killed, quoting military sources. The toll was "highly unlikely"...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

ULM, Germany (AP) - German police stepped up their crackdown on Islamic extremism Wednesday, detaining 22 people during raids of apartments and mosques allegedly used by a network that provided financing and other support to terrorists. About 700 officers searched dozens of apartments, mosques and call centers in five German states, discovering militant Islamic propaganda and forged passports and visas, authorities said. The raids capped a long-term investigation of 20 people who allegedly raised money through smuggling and producing false papers to "pursue their ideological goals," said prosecutors in Munich, where authorities coordinated the probe. The suspects included German citizens...

A look at the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam, blamed for attacks in Iraq and supported by a network of members in Europe, according to authorities. -HISTORY: Founded in late 2001 in Kurdish part of northern Iraq by Mullah Krekar, who has lived as refugee in Norway since 1991. Area was beyond Saddam Hussein's control thanks to Western-enforced no-fly zones. Supporters set up an enclave near the Iranian border ruled by strict Islamic law. Members trained in Afghanistan and provided safe haven to al-Qaida members fleeing after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. -SIZE: Ansar al-Islam fighters in Iraq, believed to...

BERLIN (AP) - Islamic extremists accused of plotting to kill Iraq's prime minister in Germany are smuggling battle-hardened fighters from Iraq to Europe, raising a potential new terrorist threat on the continent, according to German officials. More than 20 alleged supporters of Ansar al-Islam have been arrested in Europe in the past year as authorities move against the group that has links with al-Qaida and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who's been leading bloody attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam is suspected of spiriting dozens of fired-up young Muslims to Iraq to join the insurgency, but the latest...

BAGHDAD — A purported new message from Osama bin Laden yesterday condemned all Iraqis who cast ballots in upcoming elections as "infidels," and it endorsed Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist leader who is attempting to halt the Jan. 30 vote.     Hours before portions of the audiotape aired on the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera, suicide terrorists bombed the Baghdad home of a top Shi'ite political leader, and Iraq's main Sunni political group said it would boycott the elections. [snip] On Iraq's upcoming elections, it said:     "The constitution imposed by the American occupier Bremer is blasphemous ... and anyone who takes...